Named in a Schedule A Lawsuit? What Online Sellers Should Do Now

Most online sellers learn they have been sued in a “Schedule A” case the same way: their Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Temu, Etsy or TikTok Shop balance is suddenly frozen, and a notice arrives citing a federal court in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa or Chicago. The complaint doesn’t name the seller at all. Instead, it names “the Individuals, Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A”—a sealed list of dozens or hundreds of store names, filed separately.

These cases are brought by brand owners under the Lanham Act, usually alleging trademark counterfeiting and infringement under 15 U.S.C. § 1114 and false designation of origin under § 1125(a). They move fast: the plaintiff typically obtains a temporary restraining order and an asset freeze before the seller knows the case exists, then seeks a default judgment for statutory damages against everyone who does not respond.

The Southern District of Florida is one of the busiest Schedule A venues in the country, and the Middle District of Florida has begun to see them too. This article explains how these cases work, what the available numbers show, how Florida judges are increasingly pushing back, and exactly what a named seller should do in the first days.

How a Schedule A Case Unfolds

Schedule A litigation follows a template. As one Florida federal judge summarized it, these cases are usually brought ex parte and come with four requests: (1) an emergency temporary restraining order (TRO), (2) a prejudgment asset restraint, (3) sealing of some or all of the record, and (4) permission to serve defendants electronically.

The asset freeze is the lever. Because the freeze reaches every dollar in the seller’s marketplace and payment accounts—not just proceeds from the accused products—many sellers settle quickly to regain access to their money. Sellers who ignore the case almost always end up in default, and the frozen funds are then applied toward a statutory damages award.

By the Numbers: Schedule A Filings in Florida

No court publishes an official count of Schedule A cases. The figures below come from academic studies, legal-analytics publishers and public docket searches. Each uses a slightly different method, so they are best read as indicators of scale and direction rather than precise totals.

What the published data shows

Measure	Southern District of Florida	Middle District of Florida	Source
All Schedule A IP cases, cumulative through Dec. 2022	242 cases (7.5% of 3,217 nationwide; second only to N.D. Ill.)	Under 2% of the national total (not separately reported)	Goldman, A SAD Scheme of Abusive IP Litigation, 123 Colum. L. Rev. F. 183 (2023)
Schedule A patent cases, 2021 / 2022 / 2023	9 / 9 / 24	Not reported	Appellate Law Group analysis (2024)
Trademark (Lanham Act) cases with “Schedule A” defendants, 2024	90	Not separately counted	Justia Dockets, trademark nature of suit, party name “Schedule A”
Design patent cases, 2025	41, of which more than 70% named Schedule A defendants	Not reported	Lex Machina (2026)
Trend, 2025	Third-busiest trademark court in the U.S., driven by a surge in Schedule A filings	Schedule A filings appear in Tampa, drawing a critical February 2026 ruling	World Trademark Review (Sept. 2025); M.D. Fla. dockets

Nationally, Goldman’s dataset counted 533 Schedule A cases filed in 2020, 733 in 2021 and 935 in 2022, about 88% of them trademark cases. By August 2025, Goldman estimated the cumulative total at more than 7,700 cases affecting over 1.5 million defendants. Law360 reported in May 2026 that filings kept climbing in 2025 and spread beyond Chicago—a shift accelerated when a Northern District of Illinois judge stayed his Schedule A docket in mid-2025, sending brand owners to Florida and New York.

Filings by district, year and claim type

The grid below shows every Schedule A count we could verify for the Northern District of Illinois, the Southern District of Florida and the Middle District of Florida since 2021, split into trademark, design patent and utility patent claims. Empty cells are not zero; they are years and claim types for which no free public source reports a count.

Where the data exists, the trends are clear:

• The Northern District of Illinois dominates design patent Schedule A cases. Filings rose from 54 in 2021 to 127 in 2023, when Chicago accounted for 80% of all such cases nationwide, and reached 105 in just the first half of 2024—88% of the national total for that period. Design patent Schedule A cases made up more than half of all patent cases filed in the district.
• Chicago’s trademark volume dwarfs everything else. A Westlaw search found about 4,207 Schedule A trademark cases in the Northern District of Illinois from January 2013 through mid-February 2025—an average of well over 300 a year—though no source breaks that total down by year.
• The Southern District of Florida is growing fastest from a smaller base. Its Schedule A patent cases nearly tripled from 9 in 2022 to 24 in 2023, three-quarters of them design patents, and design patent Schedule A filings reached an estimated 29 or more in 2025. Its 90 Schedule A trademark cases in 2024 make trademark claims the district’s dominant category by a wide margin.
• Utility patents are a small share everywhere. Where a split is available, utility patent Schedule A cases are in the single digits.
• The Middle District of Florida has no published counts in any category. Its Schedule A docket is new enough that no analytics publisher has yet reported it separately.
• 2025–2026 likely shifted volume toward Florida. After Judge Kness stayed his Schedule A docket in mid-2025, commentators reported Northern District filings slowing sharply and brand owners refiling in Florida and New York. The size of that shift will not be clear until 2025–2026 district counts are published.

What the numbers mean for sellers

• The Southern District of Florida is a major Schedule A venue. At roughly 90 trademark Schedule A filings in 2024 alone — each naming dozens to hundreds of sellers — several thousand seller accounts are swept into Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach cases every year.
• The plaintiffs are well-known brands. 2024 filings in the district include Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany, Burberry, Adidas, Fender, Tesla, Luxottica/Oakley, Purple and Topgolf Callaway, among others.
• The Middle District of Florida is newer ground. Schedule A cases there remain comparatively rare, and the most significant published decision so far, discussed below, was sharply critical of the practice.

Awards and Outcomes

How cases end

Schedule A cases rarely reach a decision on the merits. They end in one of three ways:

• Settlement. Most sellers who respond settle, typically paying a sum and agreeing to stop selling in exchange for dismissal and release of the frozen funds. Settlements are private and are not reported on the docket beyond a notice of dismissal.
• Voluntary dismissal. When a seller raises a serious defense—lack of personal jurisdiction, improper joinder, a non-infringing product—plaintiffs frequently drop that seller rather than litigate, which also keeps the issue away from appellate courts.
• Default judgment. Sellers who never respond are defaulted. The court enters a permanent injunction, awards statutory damages and orders the frozen funds turned over.

The Tampa Price case illustrates the pattern. Of 102 sellers named, about 23 settled and 19 were voluntarily dismissed within roughly two months, four responded on the merits, and the plaintiff settled with or dismissed all but one of them. Commentators and courts alike describe the asset freeze as the reason: as the Northern District of Illinois observed in Eicher Motors, a freeze at the outset can strangle defendants into settling involuntarily.

What courts award on default

Because defaulting sellers produce no sales records, plaintiffs almost always elect statutory damages for counterfeiting under 15 U.S.C. § 1117(c) rather than proving actual losses:

	Per counterfeit mark, per type of goods
Ordinary counterfeiting	$1,000 to $200,000
Willful counterfeiting	Up to $2,000,000

The Southern District of Florida is known for awards at the high end. A 2025 Middle District of Florida recommendation collected Southern District decisions awarding $1,000,000 per trademark against defaulted Schedule A sellers, and courts frequently infer willfulness from a defendant’s default. In practice, the collectible amount is usually limited to whatever was frozen in the seller’s accounts, which is why the freeze matters so much.

Other outcome metrics

• Ex parte relief is granted at very high rates. One study found the Northern District of Illinois granted ex parte temporary restraining orders in 85 of 87 Schedule A design patent cases filed from 2022 to 2024, about 98%.
• Defaults dominate judgments. Lex Machina reports that in patent cases more claimants won by default judgment than at trial, a result it attributes largely to Schedule A cases against alleged counterfeiters.
• Equitable recovery is rare. Courts have noted that although plaintiffs justify the freeze as protecting an eventual accounting of profits, Schedule A plaintiffs typically end the case by asking to unfreeze the money and award statutory damages instead.

Florida Courts Are Pushing Back

Seller defenses that rarely worked a few years ago now succeed regularly, and Florida judges have been at the front of that shift.

Decision	Court	What it held
Omega, SA v. Individuals, Business Entities & Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule “A”, 650 F. Supp. 3d 1349 (S.D. Fla. 2023)	S.D. Fla.	Committing the same type of violation in the same way does not link defendants together for joinder
Tushbaby, Inc. v. Schedule A Defendants, 2024 WL 3741359 (S.D. Fla. Aug. 9, 2024)	S.D. Fla.	Alleging that many defendants infringed the same IP does not satisfy Rule 20
CIN Corp. v. Schedule A Defendants, 2025 WL 1433742 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 7, 2025)	S.D. Fla.	Combining more than 100 alleged infringers in one action violated Rule 20
Louis Vuitton Malletier v. Schedule A Defendants, 2025 WL 2256518 (S.D. Fla. 2025)	S.D. Fla.	Joinder requires a logical relationship between the operative facts, not just a shared plaintiff
Price v. Schedule A Defendants, No. 8:25-cv-3398 (M.D. Fla. 2026)	M.D. Fla. (Tampa)	Vacated the TRO, denied the preliminary injunction and asset freeze, and dismissed all but one defendant for misjoinder
Ain Jeem, Inc. v. Schedule A Defendants, 2025 WL 3484945 (11th Cir. 2025)	11th Cir.	Declined to reach the procedural issues as moot after the plaintiff dismissed the objecting seller

The Tampa decision in Price

Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s 37-page opinion is the most detailed critique of Schedule A practice from a Florida court, and it gives sellers a roadmap. She found that:

• The ex parte TRO did not satisfy Rule 65. The plaintiff offered only generalized, unsworn claims that sellers might move money offshore, not specific facts showing why notice would cause irreparable harm.
• Marketplaces and banks could not be ordered to freeze assets. A court can bind nonparties only if they act in concert with or aid a defendant; the platforms had no notice of any infringement when the order issued.
• The plaintiff had not shown likely success on the merits. It never put its own product in the record, offered no product-by-product comparison, and included listings that bore little resemblance to its mark.
• A blanket asset freeze was not justified. Many sellers were in the United States, and the plaintiff gave no reason to freeze every dollar of every defendant.
• Joinder was improper. Theories that sellers shared a common supplier or platform were unsupported speculation.

The court also noted that the Lanham Act does not reach purely foreign sales after Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., 600 U.S. 412 (2023), and other circuits have tightened the rules on electronic service of foreign defendants (Smart Study Co. v. Shenzhenshixindajixieyouxiangongsi, 164 F.4th 164 (2d Cir. 2025)).

What to Do Now: A Checklist for Named Sellers

Time matters. The preliminary injunction hearing is often only a few weeks after the TRO, and a default can follow soon after a missed deadline.

1. Don’t ignore it, and don’t panic-pay. Ignoring the case leads to default and a judgment that can far exceed your frozen balance. Paying the first settlement demand without review often means overpaying.
2. Identify the case. Get the case number, court and judge from your marketplace notice or the plaintiff’s email. Pull the docket from PACER and find your store name on Schedule A, which may still be sealed.
3. Calendar every deadline. Note the TRO expiration, the preliminary injunction hearing date and any response deadline. If you were served by email, your answer is generally due 21 days after service.
4. Preserve your records. Save listings, product photos, supplier invoices, sales data for the accused products and all communications. Don’t delete listings or change store information in ways that look like evasion.
5. Stop selling the accused products while you assess the claim. Continuing sales can support a finding of willfulness.
6. Measure what’s really at stake. Calculate your actual sales of the accused items, separately from your total frozen balance. That number frames both settlement and any challenge to the freeze.
7. Assess the merits product by product. Is your product genuine and lawfully purchased? Does it actually use the plaintiff’s mark, or something merely similar? Does the mark appear only to describe compatibility?
8. Check jurisdiction and joinder. Did you sell into Florida, or anywhere in the U.S.? Are you lumped together with unrelated sellers? Both can be grounds for dismissal or severance.
9. Hire U.S. counsel quickly. A business entity cannot represent itself in federal court, and an attorney can usually negotiate a partial release of non-infringing funds even before the merits are resolved.
10. Decide: settle, contest or seek dismissal. With the facts above, counsel can weigh a negotiated release against a motion to dissolve the freeze, sever or dismiss.

Defenses and Leverage Points

Issue	Why it matters	Where it has worked
Overbroad asset freeze	Freezes are meant to preserve an equitable remedy, so they should be limited to the profits from accused products, not a seller’s entire balance	Price (M.D. Fla. 2026) denied a blanket freeze; sellers commonly obtain partial releases by documenting actual sales
Improper joinder	Unrelated sellers who merely infringe the same mark cannot be sued together under Rule 20	Omega (2023), Tushbaby (2024), CIN Corp. and Louis Vuitton (2025) in S.D. Fla.; Price in M.D. Fla.
No personal jurisdiction	A seller with no sales or targeting of Florida or the U.S. may not be subject to suit there	Plaintiffs often dismiss sellers who raise it rather than litigate
Defective TRO	Rule 65 requires specific sworn facts justifying relief without notice	Price vacated the TRO for lack of those facts
Non-infringement	Genuine goods, a different mark, or a descriptive reference to compatibility are not infringement	Requires product-specific evidence the plaintiff often lacks
No U.S. sales	The Lanham Act does not reach purely foreign sales after Abitron (2023)	Limits injunctions and damages to U.S. activity
Service problems	Email service on defendants in countries that object under the Hague Convention may be invalid	Smart Study (2d Cir. 2025); not yet binding in the Eleventh Circuit
Wrongful-injunction recovery	Plaintiffs must post a bond for a TRO, and a wrongfully restrained seller may claim against it	Bond amounts are often small, so the court’s setting of the bond is itself worth contesting

Settlement realities

Even a strong defense costs money to assert, and plaintiffs know it. Settlements are usually negotiated against the seller’s frozen balance and actual sales of the accused products. A seller with a credible jurisdiction or joinder defense, or clear evidence of minimal sales, is in a far better negotiating position—and in the current climate, Florida judges are more receptive to those arguments than they were even two years ago.

If you are a defendant in a Schedule A litigation in Florida Federal Court, contact [email protected] or call 305-374-8303 to discuss how to best defend you and your e-commerce business.